IL LISA MICHELLE STEBIC: Missing from Plainfield, IL - 1 May 2007 - Age 37

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Lisa Michelle Stebic – The Charley Project

Disappearance of Lisa Stebic - Wikipedia

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Details of Disappearance
Lisa was reported missing by a neighbor on May 1, 2007. She was last seen on April 30 at her home in the 13200 block of Red Star Drive in Plainfield, Illinois. At the time of her disappearance she resided with her two children and her husband, Craig Stebic. He stated he last saw her at 6:00 p.m.

She normally worked out each evening at Plainfield North High School, and he believed she had gotten a ride there. Lisa took her purse and cellular phone with her when she went missing, but there has been no activity on the phone or on her credit cards since her disappearance. She left her vehicle behind in her garage. She has never been heard from again.

Craig had filed for divorce several months before Lisa's disappearance, but the couple continued to live together. Lisa's friends said she was looking forward to starting a new life without her husband. Craig stated that although they lived in the same house, he and Lisa led separate lives and rarely spoke to one another.

On the day of her disappearance, she mailed her attorney a petition asking for Craig to be ordered out of their residence; she called him "unnecessarily relentless, cruel, inconsiderate, domineering and verbally abusive" and said his behavior was detrimental to their children.

The couple may have also been having financial problems; their home was mortgaged for more than it was worth, and Craig had just been laid off from his job. Lisa's friends said she was afraid of her husband, and she was attending counseling sessions at a center for battered women.

They had been married for fourteen years prior to her disappearance. The police were called to their home in 2006 because of a verbal dispute between Lisa and Craig, but apparently no violence had occurred, and no arrests were made. Craig had been convicted of felony weapons charges in the 1990s, but no violent offenses.

In the days following Lisa's disappearance, investigators searched the Stebic residence multiple times, and also confiscated the couple's two vehicles and a tarp found inside one of them. Some media outlets reported Lisa's blood was found on the tarp, but police have not confirmed this.

Two months after Lisa's disappearance, Craig was officially named as a person of interest in her case. Authorities stated he refused to cooperate with the investigation or allow his children to be interviewed. The day after he was named as a person of interest, Craig asked the court to dismiss his divorce petition against Lisa.

Police stated they do not believe Lisa left of her own accord, had an accident or was forcibly abducted, but they do believe she came to harm. A grand jury convened to investigate Lisa's disappearance in November 2007. Her two children, who were ten and twelve years old at the time of her disappearance, were called to testify.

No charges have been filed against Craig in relation to his wife's disappearance, but he was arrested for assault in an unrelated case in November 2009. He allegedly threatened a neighbor.

Lisa graduated Libertyville High School and attended Southern Illinois University before transferring to Kendall College, where she obtained a degree in hotel and restaurant management. She was employed as a food assistant at Lincoln Elementary School at the time of her disappearance.

It is uncharacteristic of her to abandon her children or to leave without warning, and she did not have any health issues or mental problems at the time she went missing. Foul play is suspected in her case, which remains unsolved.


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[Summer_Breeze]

CBS Affilliate Cleared of Defaming NBC Reporter

CHICAGO (CN) – CBS did not defame former NBC reporter Amy Jacobson when it published a videotape of her swimming with the husband of a missing woman, allegedly suggesting she was having an affair with him, an Illinois appeals court ruled. Robert Webb’s sister-in-law Lisa Stebic disappeared...

api.courthousenews.com

JACK BOUBOUSHIAN / December 1, 2014

CHICAGO (CN) - CBS did not defame former NBC reporter Amy Jacobson when it published a videotape of her swimming with the husband of a missing woman, allegedly suggesting she was having an affair with him, an Illinois appeals court ruled.

Robert Webb's sister-in-law Lisa Stebic disappeared in April 2007. Lisa's husband Craig Stebic- Webb's brother - was named as a person of interest by the local police.

Amy Jacobson, a reporter for Chicago's NBC station WMAQ, took a personal interest in the matter and established a rapport with Robert and Jill Webb. She also spoke with Craig Stebic in person and visited the Stebic home.

Based on Jacobson's interest in the case, Webb and Stebic jointly invited Jacobson and her children to visit the Stebics' home on July 6, 2007, the day before a planned community-wide search for Lisa Stebic, to discuss her disappearance.

The same day, CBS reporter Michael Puccinelli arrived hoping to interview a Stebic family member about the planned search. Puccinelli rang the doorbell, but Robert Webb told him the family did not wish to speak to him.

Puccinelli then went to a neighbor's house and obtained permission to videotape the activities in the Stebics' backyard.

The videotape, subsequently aired on a CBS broadcast, showed Craig Stebic, the Webbs and their children, and Jacobson - clad in a bikini - and her children around the swimming pool.

NBC fired Jacobson days later. She later filed a multi-million dollar defamation lawsuit against CBS for destroying her career by making it seem that she was "an adulteress and unethical reporter."

But an Illinois appeals court found for CBS last week, ruling that as a high-profile reporter chasing the Stebic story, Jacobson was a public figure and that CBS did not act with malice by airing the video of her at the Webbs' home.

"There can be no dispute that the plaintiff inserted herself into a prominent position in the controversy. Already a well-known local personality and high-profile reporter, the plaintiff worked steadfastly to become the 'owner' of the Stebic story, admittedly throwing herself into the case, frequenting the site of the Stebic home with a camera crew, participating in public vigils and searches with a camera crew, or, at times on her days off, urging the public to come forward with any clues shedding light on Lisa's disappearance," Justice Thomas Hoffman said, writing for the three-judge panel.

In fact, it was Jacobson's vigorous investigation into Stebic's disappearance that placed her in the public spotlight and made her actions on ethically questionable, the panel noted.

Proof of a ratings battle between NBC and CBS is not enough to show that CBS intended to personally defame Jacobson to lift its own ratings, the judgment stated.

"Viewed in its proper context, the plaintiff's evidence fails to create a triable issue that, when CBS edited and broadcast the videotape, it did so with the intent to publish a false report about the plaintiff, or with a reckless disregard as to the truth of the report," Hoffman wrote.

The justices disagreed that the footage unequivocally implied that Jacobson was having an affair with Craig Stebic, the husband of the missing woman.

"There is nothing shown in the videotape that is especially private. The plaintiff is shot from a distance, has a towel around her waist, and is seen primarily walking around talking on her cell phone," Hoffman wrote in the 14-page opinion.

And as an experienced reporter, Jacobson should have known that other reporting crews would be in the area the day before the search and would be eager to film the missing woman's husband as a person of interest.

Therefore, "it cannot be reasonably said that the plaintiff expected that she would find seclusion on the readily visible property outside of the home," the panel found.

The Webbs also lost their suit for invasion of privacy on similar grounds.